


Ink of a Rosy Morning

by rose_indigo_and_tom



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Western, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 00:11:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14883915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rose_indigo_and_tom/pseuds/rose_indigo_and_tom
Summary: After the war, Bucky just wanted to get away. He’d given up enough for a cause he didn’t even really believe in, and even once the battles were over, he couldn’t seem to leave it all behind. But he got as far away as he could, and then he walked a little further, and then he settled down, to carve a place and a life for himself out of the land on DC-202.He was expecting quiet, and a fair amount of worrying about the weather, and learning how to be a farmer instead of a city boy. He wasn’t expecting any of the other stuff. He wasn’t expecting Steve.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [double digging for the successful transplant of organic cultivars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8107882) by [Rest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rest/pseuds/Rest). 



> They say to write the fic you want to see in the world, so this is perhaps the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written. It wasn't quite sure what it wanted to be at first, and turned out a good bit different than I'd expected, but I hope you like it.
> 
> Title from "When First I Came to Caledonia." I prefer the version by Ten Strings and a Goat Skin, but it's a traditional tune.
> 
> I'll be posting updates as I complete them, but hope to get through about one a week, if things go well.

It was early summer on DC-202, and that day in particular dawned misty and still a bit chilly. Low 60s, maybe. The sun was coming up strong over the horizon though, staining the sky pink and pale blue. Smells of wet dirt and rosemary filled the air. It was perfectly peaceful, yet James couldn’t help but keep checking over his shoulder as he walked to the henhouse. There was no one there, of course, but he didn’t stop looking.

 

The hens seemed happy to see him, clucking and clustering around his feet as he opened the door. DC-202 was a good place for hens, cause there weren’t really any foxes or hawks around to carry them off. He didn’t hardly even need to keep them penned up, but for the fact that they might wander away somewhere. He fed them their corn and left them to their pecking, heading towards the fields to do a bit of work before it got too hot.

 

By nine all the haze had burned off and it was shaping up to be a hot day. He finished the last row of potatoes he’d been planting, and headed off towards the house for some breakfast. No point in eating before he went out, when he’d just be wasting cool morning hours. He’d never been much of a cook, growing up, and then in the army all their food was provided, so breakfast was nothing special, just eggs on toast with a piece of fruit. Nutritional, if not thrilling in flavor. 

 

It was a simple life. The fields, the animals, his little house. Not without all the tech and comforts of modern life, but slower paced than anything he’d had before the war.

 

It was odd, how the time slipped by. He was working so much, yet enjoying it more than when he’d gone out with a different girl every night. Maybe it was because his work felt like it _meant_ something now. He wasn’t just off in an office somewhere, taking down numbers. He was making his food, and food for other people in places he couldn’t even imagine. Watching animals grow up. Spending evenings making a house into a home. 

 

That day was a good day, though. None of the machines backfired, no animals rustled suddenly in the grass. His metal arm worked the way it was supposed to. His mind stayed blessedly blank. 

 

Out on the farm, he could go for weeks without speaking to another person. Without speaking at all, unless he was talking to one of the farm animals. He wrote to his mother, on occasion, but hadn’t brought himself to actually speak to her. Didn’t know what he’d say, or how he’d say it. 

 

His letters usually went something like this—

 

_Hey Ma. All is well here with me. It was hot again today. The chickens are doing well. Rye, too. Hope things are going okay where you are. Your son._

 

No mention of the nightmares, or the constant urge to look over his shoulder, or the phantom pains he felt down through the metal arm, or the fact he hadn’t seen a human in days, and frankly didn’t want to, or the fact that he still hadn’t looked at the news in all the time he’d been there. No mention of any of it, because he didn’t want to worry her and didn’t want to talk about it anyway. 

 

He didn’t keep in contact with any of his other friends either, not the ones from before the war or from during. It would have been a profoundly lonely life, if it weren’t for the fact that just the idea of seeing people made him tense up. The army had been being surrounded by humanity all the time, never a moment alone. Seeing the worst of people. Being the worst of people. He told himself he just wasn’t ready yet, to be around people. 

 

It wasn’t the only lie he told himself.

 

In any case, he didn’t spend all day every day contemplating his fate, or sitting around feeling sorry for himself. He spent every day like this one, feeding livestock and weeding and planting and harvesting, depending on what was in season. The machines could do most of it for him, and of course the plants were genetically modified to resist bugs, but it still wasn’t a labor-less existence. The potatoes needed to be planted, and he’d have to mound the dirt up around them once they started to grow. A machine could harvest grain as easy as anything, but he liked the time he spent with the plants on his own as well.

 

He took his lunch out in the fields, sitting underneath a tall tree. Leftovers from his dinner the night before, eaten cold. Again, far from gourmet, but it was fuel. Wasn’t meant to be delicious. He remembered, in theory, that at one point in his life, food had been about love and comfort and joy, but now it was just fuel. Didn’t matter. 

 

After his break he went back to work, this time picking strawberries. It was hot, painful work, bending over the low, spreading plants in the shadeless field, and he could feel sweat trickle down the small of his back. His metal arm was warm to the touch from the sun, like something you left for too long in a hot vehicle. 

 

In one way or another, the rest of the day passed, and he returned to his house hot and sweaty and exhausted, just the way he wanted it. Too tired to think. 

 

He showered, cooked. Read an update from his ma. Dinner was sweet potatoes, greens and lab-grown beef, cooked the best way he knew how, which still wasn’t particularly good. He drank a too-big glass of his neighbor’s moonshine with his meal, not even wincing at the taste anymore. Spent the time between dinner and bed pretending to read, but really mostly staring blankly at the wall, thinking to himself _stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop_ , willing his thoughts to shift. Pinching red marks into the soft skin of his elbow with his metal fingers. Gritting his teeth. 

 

When it was time for bed, he found himself lying awake, looking up at the ceiling and dreading the dreams he knew were coming. Dreading what he might see, but also longing for the break from thinking, if only for a few hours. Sleep came, eventually, and whatever he dreamed remained, thankfully, unremembered.

 

————————————————————————————————

 

The next morning was not off to a good start. He woke up panting, with a splitting headache, not quite sure where he was. It took a few minutes of gazing at the plain grey walls and pale wood cabinets to come back to himself, remember that he was safe. Getting out of bed was hard, as if the memories were literally weighing him down, but he did it eventually. Dragged himself through the motions of getting ready.

 

As if his mood wasn’t already problem enough, the day was sweltering and humid. The idea of staying out there all day was abhorrent, but he didn’t really have a choice. The animals needed him, and there were crops to be harvested. The strawberries were at their peak, and if he didn’t pick them, they’d just rot away in the fields. 

 

So he went through the motions of the day, as difficult as it was, because he didn’t have any choice. Part of why he’d chosen the farm (in addition to the fact that he wouldn’t have to talk to people) was that he wouldn’t be able to just ignore it to stay in bed all day. He _had_ to get up, had to work, had to leave the house. Maybe he was pushing himself too hard, but it was what worked for him. He didn’t know any other way, besides pushing.

 

Beans needed planting too, so he did that after breakfast. Or, rather, one of the machines did it, but he still needed to be there to run the machine. Before the revolution in tech, he never would’ve been able to do this himself, would’ve needed at least three more people to work this same amount of land. Hence the stereotype that farmers have loads of kids. But now, thanks to all the machines, he could live out here on his own, without worrying about other people looking at him, without feeling their eyes on him all day long, without their voices grating, too-loud, in his ears. 

 

This was one of the days where the sun was too bright, the sky too blue, the machines too loud, his metal arm too shiny, and it felt like his whole body was being pulled down into the ground (never mind that this planet had been terraformed to have the same gravity as Earth).

 

The days here changed length with the seasons, especially long in summer and especially short in winter, so that on a day like this there might be 16 hours of daylight, followed by 16 hours of darkness. It was a blessing and a curse, because it meant more time in between having to face the night, but also more time awake with his thoughts. 

 

Spring on DC-202 had an hour and a half of rain in the afternoon every other day, and this was one of the days it was meant to rain. Sometimes he’d just go on and work through it, but there was no need today. He’d finished everything that was absolutely pressing, and didn’t have the energy to get to any of the smaller tasks, like looking at the automatic plow, which had been making a strange clicking noise as of late. 

 

So when it started to get cloudy and grey, he headed inside. Showered and climbed into bed, figuring even if he didn’t sleep he’d still like to be there. He put on some vid from a faraway planet, let the voices and canned laughter wash over him as he laid there. His sorrow and regret felt like an anvil sat on his chest, pressing him down against the mattress. He eventually did fall asleep, faces in his mind and unshed tears in his eyes. 

 

When he woke up, it was much later and the sky was starting to turn red and orange. He’d slept for much, much longer than he intended to. Probably slept through dinner as well. He couldn’t bring himself to care. Fixed himself something quick, just eggs and greens.

 

When he went back to bed for the night, the same faces rose up behind his eyes. People he’d killed, people he’d seen killed. Good people. The war had no right side and wrong side, no grand moral victory. Just greed, on both sides, and he’d been unlucky enough to be caught in the crosshairs. They all had. If he’d had a choice he wouldn’t’ve fought, would’ve stayed at home with his ma and sisters and friends (god, but he couldn’t think about that, couldn’t think of what he’d left behind). But no one had a choice. When the army came knocking, you answered. 

 

And now where was he? The people at the top had money beyond their wildest dreams, but the poor bastards who’d fought for them just had heads full of nightmares, missing limbs, and an army pension that was barely enough to help. A few hundred credits a month, or a plot of land on a distant planet. It was obvious which one he’d picked, and he wasn’t sorry at all. The farm was the one thing to come out of this whole mess that he didn’t regret. 

 

————————————————————————————————

 

The next week there was a market day, which he’d been dreading. Most of the people on this planet were the farming sort, and sold their produce off-world, but there were a few towns where people needed to buy something to eat. He headed for one of those, transport loaded down with strawberries and cucumbers deemed too small or too ugly for people on the wealthier planets. 

 

He didn’t have to get up as early, and so spent a little time luxuriating in the softness of his bed, the sleepy, half-awake feeling of morning. He dressed a bit nicer than usual, in a grey collarless shirt with buttons up the front and black slacks. They’d probably just get dirty later on, but at least the effort was there. 

 

The ride into town was long, almost an hour even at top speed, but he read that same book, still stubbornly stuck on the same chapter. The detective had realized the whole mystery hinged on the way time was measured differently on the different planets, and that just made his brain hurt. It was well enough when you were living it, but he didn’t like to think overmuch about the idea. Becca would’ve had something to say about “Time is a social construct!” but he didn’t want to think about Becca and he sure as hell didn’t want to think about what the hell a social construct was. 

 

When he got to the market he set his things up next to Nat, the red-haired beekeeper who lived a few farms over from him. One of his nearest neighbors, even if her land was almost a mile away. She was, he supposed, the closest thing he had to a friend on DC-202, and he didn’t know if he’d ever said two sentences in a row to her. 

 

“Good morning!” she said, sounding suspiciously chipper.

 

“Mornin,’” he grunted, starting to unload his produce.

 

From the conversations they’d had, he’d gleaned that she’d been a spy in the war, for the same side as him, and that she wasn’t any happier about her service than he was about hers. _But she can still talk to people_ , a mean part of his brain whispered. _She’s not a disaster like you_. 

 

_Stop stop stop stop stop stop_ he thought at that part of his brain. Pinched the inside of his elbow. Moved some crates more forcefully. His aunt was a shrink, and he could practically hear her voice inside his head, reminding him that different people handled things differently. Just because Nat could talk didn’t mean the war hadn’t affected her.

 

She had a friend, or a business partner, or a boyfriend, or maybe even a husband, who worked on the farm with her, keeping up an orchard. Nothing much in the orchard was in season yet, but Clint was there anyway, partly to keep Nat company, and partly probably to enjoy town. 

 

Once the market opened, he did a good business. Not many people in this quadrant grew purebred strawberries, most opting for a genetically modified berry hybrid, so his were in high demand. Harder to grow of course, but he was a bit of a traditionalist. The rest of the produce went as well, because even what you couldn’t eat now, you could preserve for later, when it was too cold to go to market, and too cold to grow anything anyway.

 

For the most part he managed to avoid having to talk too much to any of the customers, just sort of grunting and nodding at them. Grit his teeth through the few who did want to have a longer exchange. Answered a few questions about his produce, though that was the easy part. In all it was a better market day than he expected. Not as much like pulling teeth as the last one had been. 

 

He got Clint to watch his stall for a while, so he could wander over to the general store and look at new boots. Most things were taken care of with replication, but his old boots were so worn down, replicating them wouldn’t do a lick of good. When he came back, Nat was looking at him like he’d done something good.

 

“I see you’ve finally replaced those old boots of yours,” she said.

 

“Yeah…they’ve worn a hole about clean through the sole.”

 

“Does that mean you actually _spoke_ to a shopkeeper, James Barnes?”

 

He tried to to tense up at the use of his name. Nodded his head. 

 

“Well I’ll be. Thought I’d never see the day,” she said, but not meanly. Like she really did care, really was happy for him.

 

“Oh hush, you. I’ve spoken to shopkeepers before, ain’t I?”

 

“‘Course you have, but I don’t know I’ve ever heard you say but three words to one. Asking for your size of shoes, though, that’s new territory.” She laughed as she said it, teasing gently, but not enough to grate. 

 

He just chuckled, then went on to packing up his empty crates. Somehow a jar of honey had found its way into his things.

“And what’s this, _Natalia?_ ” he asked.

 

“Just a little something we had left over. Nothing much.”

 

He couldn’t just let her get away with that, but he’d been expecting it, so he pulled a pint of strawberries out from under his table. 

 

“It’ll be a trade. Take these.”

 

Her face lit up, as if she hadn’t totally been expecting it, and she grabbed the box, popping a berry into her mouth immediately. He turned away rather than stand there and watch her eat it, getting ready to go.

 

“I’ll be seeing you,” he said, before closing the door of the transport. She waved as he drove away, and there was the smallest seed of disappointment in his heart to be saying goodbye, even as he sighed in relief. 

 

The market always took so much out of him, he wasn’t good for anything but lying around for the rest of the day, in his own still and quiet little house. He wrote his weekly letter to his mother, trying to make it something more than it usually was, feeling like he could do at least that today.

 

_Ma—_

_Hope this finds you well. Today was market day, and my strawberries were awful popular. A bit of nostalgia goes a long way for people on one of these remote planets, I guess. Nat gave me some honey, and it’s amazing how different it tastes from the winter honey. Never would’ve thought it’d make a difference to the bees like that._

_How’s Becca? I haven’t heard from her in a while, so I take it university is as exciting as she’s always hoped._

 

He stopped writing, not sure how much to share. His impulses all said he should stop there. Push it down. Not trouble her. But there was a tiny voice in the back of his head that said _Wouldn’t she like to know?_ So he hit enter, added another paragraph.

 

_Things have been getting better here. Still not so good at talking to other people, still having bad days, but not as bad as it has been. Glad I can tell give you that good news, if nothing else_.

 

— _Your son._

————————————————————————————————

 

The rest of spring and summer past quickly, far more quickly than he’d expected. It was only his second summer with the farm, and he still found himself surprised with the amount of work there was to do, with the fertility of the earth and the effectiveness of the terraforming. Days got longer, then shorter again. Things grew and were harvested and died off. His ma wrote to him, and he wrote back, mostly. 

 

Other people wrote to him, too, but he couldn’t bring himself to write back. He knew his old army buddies would like to know how he was doing, but it was so much work just to stay afloat as it was. He didn’t need to be dredging all that shit up again, any more than it already was. 

 

He was settled in his life, in short. 

 

He knew what to expect out of the days and nights, and yes there were nightmares and thoughts he’d rather avoid, but he knew they were coming. He knew when he’d have to see people, when he’d have to think about putting a name to his face, when he’d have to watch his expressions carefully. It was a lonely existence sometimes, but it was also comforting. After all the instability of the war, there was finally something he could count on every single day. A gentle rhythm to his days. Animals he could be kind to. 

 

It was peaceful, and busy, and the closest thing he’d had approaching happy in years and years. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything changes after he’s been there for a little over three years. It’s high summer this time, corn grown waist high and more tomatoes and eggplant than he has any fucking idea what to do with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to @etymologyplayground for their help with this chapter!

Everything changes after he’s been there for a little over three years. It’s high summer this time, corn grown waist high and more tomatoes and eggplant than he has any fucking idea what to do with. Sell them, of course, but even with all the machinery he can hardly keep up with the harvesting. He has Clint come over a couple days a week to help out, because if he doesn’t, the damn things will rot on the vine. 

He’s still a little awkward, talking, but it’s not the painful, pulling-teeth thing it used to be. Just maybe that he takes a little more time to think about what he’s going to say before it’s coming out his mouth. Clint and Natasha come over about once a week, and mostly they eat and make music and talk about the farm, but it’s different, one-on-one. Different with Clint, who has seen some of the same things he has, paid a different price for it. 

Maybe different bad, and maybe different good. Bad, because there’s one less person to fill the silence, and less of Natasha’s hearty laughs and dry humor. But good, because there’s someone there who understands. Even they don’t talk about it, there’s comfort in knowing he’s with someone else who gets why he ducks and cringes at certain sounds, why there are still days when talking feels near on impossible. He doesn’t know what side Clint fought on in the war, and doesn’t ask, because ultimately it doesn’t matter. He’s here now, and it’s not like either of them really had a stake in it anyway, beyond survival.

The day everything changes, though, is one when Clint isn’t there, is at home with Nat and the bees. It’s late in the day, the sun spreading pink over the tress. The air is thick with humidity, feels like a second skin. He’s walking back from his last chore of the day, or he probably wouldn’t have noticed the figure at all, walking towards him down the dusty road.

The first thought he registers is confusion. His nearest neighbors live a mile away, and at this point in the summer, that’d be a truly miserable walk. Besides, Nat and Clint would never surprise him like this, wouldn’t just show up without warning, unless it was an emergency. And if it were an emergency, why would they have walked?

As the figure nears, he realizes it couldn’t be Nat or Clint, too tall and broad, hair too golden brown. It’s a man, wearing dusty brown boots and a leather jacket, carrying a backpack. He thinks it’d be weird to just watch the guy walk all the way up the path to his house, so he ducks around to the side door and goes inside. The guy has a bit of a ways left to walk, but not near enough time for him to take his customary post-work shower, so he settles for a glass of water by the front window while he waits.

He doesn't usually spend time in the front room, finds it too formal and impersonal, but watching the guy approach is worth feeling like a guest in his own home for a little while. As the guy gets closer, he starts to look more and more familiar, but still unplaceable. He draws the curtains almost all the way, peers out the crack, and hopes the guy won’t notice he’s being watched, as he draws nearer and nearer to the front steps. Hears footsteps on the porch.

 

And then, there’s a knock on the door.

 

He was expecting it, of course, but it still startles him. He waits a minute, putting his water glass down on the window sill, before going to answer.

“Um, can I help you?” he asks hesitantly.

“Bucky Barnes?” the man says. “I’m, uh, I’m Steve Rogers. From PE-405?”

His first instinct is to just close the door right in Steve Roger’s pretty face. What right does he have coming here? How did he even know where to find him?

They’d grown up together, a lifetime ago. Their families had lived next door to each other in one of the larger towns on PE-405. They’d been best friends, once, sharing in schoolyard fights and comic books. But they were different people, then. The army had clearly been kind to Steve, given how much bigger he was than the last time they’d seen each other. 

Well. Not _kind_ , probably. But it’d had some benefit for him. 

He realizes that’d been a question, not a statement, and grunts in reply. Opens the door further, because he doesn’t really see another way for this to end. If Steve walked here, he surely can’t walk back to town before it gets dark, and even _he_ isn’t asshole enough to wish that walk in the dark on somebody. 

He turns and walks into the house, leaving Steve to follow. Thinks about the house as it must look to Steve: an un-lived in front entry, with uncomfortable looking furniture he’d bought all at once and out of a sense of obligation. A dim hallway with a few photographs up, mostly pictures from home or of a combination of him, Nat, and Clint. Then, the kitchen. The room he probably spends the most time in, aside from sleeping hours. It’s all honey-warm wood and China-blue tiling, a bit messy, a few chairs around a rough table he’d made himself. Dishes drying by the sink, knives on a magnetic wall-rack.

It’s a scene that, as a child, he would’ve found far too similar to his mother’s kitchen, but as an adult he appreciates the familiarity. Appreciates a kitchen that looks used and cozy. He’d been the one to pick the tiles and the cabinets, after all, and he’d chosen with his family in mind, even through the haze of pain he’d been in at the time.

Steve sets his bag down on the floor next to the table and sits down in one of the chairs. None of them match, and he’s chosen the one that leaves him with his back to the door, but with a view of the whole rest of the room. Incidentally, that chair is also the oldest, creakiest, and most likely to give you splinters in your ass.

Bucky—no one’s called him Bucky in years, not since the war, but it seems to be what Steve’s going with—doesn’t want to be rude, and doesn’t really know what to say, so he fills a glass with water from the tap and sets it down roughly in front of Steve.

“Thanks. That walk was pretty dusty,” he says, and takes a long sip.

“Did you walk the whole way from town?” His voice is rusty, quiet.

“I met someone coming out this way, they gave me a lift for all but the last mile. Red haired woman.”

“Natasha. My neighbor.”

They lapse into silence again, and he tries not to just stand there and watch Steve drink his water, but isn’t sure what else to do. Starts cooking dinner, just for something to do with his hands. He washes some miniature eggplants he’d brought in from the fields, and sets some rice to cooking. The eggplants will go with lab-grown ground pork and some chilies and garlic, and there’ll be beans as well, for something green. He makes enough for Steve, again because he figures if he’s here now, he’s got to be at least staying the night. His mama raised him well enough to know not to put someone out like that. 

After a while, he can hear Steve shifting around in his chair, tapping his fingers on the table. Like maybe he has something to say. He stops chopping the garlic he was working on, and turns to look at him.

Steve looks up, clears his throat. “I know you weren’t expecting me. I hardly warned you I was coming. But I need somewhere to stay, and there’s none of my family left, now. I’ll work, help out, however you want. Or you can send me away, in the morning. But I thought I’d at least try, after what we had when we were younger.”

He doesn’t volunteer how he found this place, and Bucky doesn’t ask. Just nods tersely. 

“You can stay the night, and as long as you need. Running this farm’s plenty of work for one person, plenty enough for two.”

And then he turns, and goes back to cooking the dinner. The silence is still awkward, but a bit less, now that he knows at least a little of what’s going on. He’d normally listen to music or the radio while he was doing this, but it seems rude to put something on without asking Steve, and he doesn't want to do that. So he just cooks, loses himself in the routine of stir-frying and steaming. The stove faces Steve, so he looks up every now and again as he’s cooking the eggplants, sees him lost in thought.

They do talk, over dinner. About the farm, and what he grows there, and what he does with the crops. About the chickens. He admits that they do all have names, but neither of them mention what will happen when they get too old to keep making eggs. They talk about Nat and Clint, and the orchards and the bees.

When the meal is over, Steve offers to do the dishes, and he can’t bring himself to say no. That’s the point of having a roommate, right? They help out. So Steve does the dishes, and Bucky sits at the table and plans for the next day.

It’ll be weeding. It’s always weeding. 

When the dishes are all washed and sitting to dry, Steve turns to him.

“D’you think I could go on and turn in? I had an early morning.”

He nods jerkily, and says “Grab your stuff.” Leads Steve out of the kitchen and down a short hallway to where the bedrooms are. The one next to his is still made up from the last time Nat and Clint got too drunk too late at night to go home, so he gestures to the closed door.

“Bed’s made up in here. Put your stuff wherever, and set an alarm for 10h. People here usually wake up for a bit in the night, read or do chores or whatever, but I don’t know when you were like before you got here, so don’t worry about forcing yourself to get up.” 

Steve nods, and goes into the room. It’s not actually really late enough to go to sleep yet, so Bucky works on a book he’s reading. Some pulp mystery novel about a multi-planet mystery, which hinges on sheep sleep cycles. 

His bathroom is an ensuite, but the guest rooms share one, so he goes in and puts a towel out for Steve, makes sure there’s soap and all. Puts a wrapped toothbrush on the counter, in case Steve doesn’t have one.

The first sleep isn’t particularly restful, full of tossing and turning and slipping into sleep just long enough to get woken up with bad dreams. Eventually he gets up a little earlier than he normally would, goes to sit on the porch with some whiskey. It’s not the best habit to get in, but he wants to listen to the cicadas and feel the cool night air in his lungs. One of the moons is full tonight, and the light makes the sky look velvety purple. 

After a while, he goes back inside. Starts some laundry. Packs lunches for the next day. Reads some more of that book. It turns out to be the boyfriend who did it. It’s always the boyfriend. Passes the time.

The second sleep is better. Sleep finds him quickly and easily, and no nightmares.

He gets up for the second time and fixes something to eat, since he figures Steve might want something before eleven thirty. It’s nothing special, just egg and cheese sandwiches, but it’ll tide them over until lunch. 

They don’t talk much while they work, but they aren’t working that close together anyway. It’s hot and humid, but not so hot that it feels like death. 

That evening, he calls up Nat to give her a piece of his mind.

“So you gave a guy a ride to my place yesterday,” he says by way of a greeting.

“I…may have done that.”

“And you didn’t think to warn me because…?”

“Wait,” she sounds genuinely surprised. “You weren’t expecting him?”

“No, I most assuredly was not.”

“Oh my god, I never would’ve brought him in from town if I knew! It’s not fair to surprise you like that.”

“I appreciate that, but he’s here now and I guess he’s staying for a while. Says he’s got nowhere else to go.”

“And how do you feel about that? You’ve been out there alone for a long time now,” she says, sympathetic but also obviously at least a little nosy.

“Well obviously it wasn’t my first choice, but he was my best friend the whole time we were growing up. It’s good to see that he's still alive, and he can help out on the farm. You know there are some tasks that have been getting away from me.” And then he steers the rest of the conversation towards his farm, and Nat and Clint’s farm, and other, safer topics.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, there’s a new normal now. Instead of spending long days with his thoughts (which really wasn’t bad), there’s someone else around. Someone else to fit into his routines.
> 
> and
> 
> Nat and Clint come for dinner the next day. They’ve done this enough that it’s not stressful anymore, and he always has plenty of food in the freezer, so he’s not worried overmuch about what he’s going to feed them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay! My dad came for a visit, and then I moved, both of which I could've seen coming and yet somehow failed to plan for.

So, there’s a new normal now. Instead of spending long days with his thoughts (which really wasn’t bad), there’s someone else around. Someone else to fit into his routines. Steve takes his coffee with just a little bit of milk, and Bucky learns how to make it the way he likes, in exchange for Steve fixing their breakfast.

Work goes better in the fields with another person. He’d been able to manage just fine on his own, but it had been managing, nothing more. There were things falling to the wayside that he’d been putting off dealing with, because he just didn’t have the time. Machines starting to run down, things around the house needing fixing. Paperwork for the business side piling up. With Steve around to run things out in the fields, he could work on all the other stuff.

It helps that Steve’s a quick study, and picks up on how things run pretty quickly. He takes to Bucky’s routines without any complaint, and does his fair share of cooking and cleaning without needing to be asked. If Bucky had to get a surprise roommate, Steve was pretty much as good as he could’ve asked for. 

The hottest part of summer passes, and the days start getting shorter again, the period of midnight wakefulness getting shorter every day. For the first while he was there, Steve didn’t emerge from his room at night, doing…whatever he was doing, but as time went on he started to come out, some. They’d maybe play a game, maybe watch something, maybe just sit on the porch and watch the stars and the trees and the road in the moonlight.

It isn’t like he didn’t recognize that Steve was attractive, or like he didn’t think he was fun and exciting to be around, but rather that he didn’t think much of those thoughts. Being mostly alone for so long, he got used to his brain running wild, thinking all kinds of thoughts that he just had to let go. Half of them were useless anyway, and the other half were only sometimes things he needed to worry about. Most of the thoughts were things like “I wonder what tapirs eat?” (meat) or “Are Clint and Natasha actually fucking?” (unclear) or “Could it get any hotter?” (unfortunately but apparently, yes). 

The point is, he catches himself looking at Steve in a way he hasn’t looked at anyone in years, and doesn’t think much of it. Lets it drift from one side of his mind to the other and out of view again. He isn’t like some people, all hung up on what relationships “ought” to look like, and he isn’t concerned about making Steve uncomfortable, it honestly just didn’t seem like a thought worth holding onto. So what if the guy’s biceps strain his t-shirts? So what if he can come up with the funniest quips? So what if his thigh is warm against Bucky’s as they sit on the porch swing. It all seems peripheral.

Peripheral is maybe the wrong word. It’s not as if he never notices the way he thinks about Steve. He just doesn’t dwell on it. 

Instead he dwells on the corn harvest. Keeping crows off has been a bitch of a task, but they’ve mostly succeeded. Corn is a good cash crop, because it keeps longer than something like tomatoes, but they can also eat it at home. Steve makes pancakes with corn, and they’re a revelation. 

Insofar as he dwells on anything in his personal life, he dwells on the fact that he hasn’t seen Nat and Clint since Steve got here, and that he misses them, and that they’ll have to meet Steve eventually. It feels weird, to miss someone, when he spent so long wishing everyone would just leave him be, but here he is, missing them. He’s not sure why the idea of them meeting Steve is worrying, but it surely is. Maybe it’s fear that they won’t get on, or maybe it’s fear that they’ll get on too well, but either way, he’s been putting off having them over.

In the end, it happens like this:

He’s on the phone with Nat in the middle of the night, talking about the market, because he’s been putting off going because he feels awkward leaving Steve here alone, but also awkward asking him to come with, and she says “For God’s sake, Barnes, you don’t have to bring him to the market, but I haven’t seen you in weeks!”

And then he feels guilty. Which he should, he thinks.

“Yeah. Sorry, Nat.” he says, in a sort of a small voice.

“It’s fine, I’m not really that upset. I just like you, against my better judgement, and Clint misses you. He’s taken to moping about and sighing at the photo of you in our living room.” 

Just barely, he can here a voice in the background say “Are you spreading lies about me again?” but not in a tone full of laughter.

“Tell Clint I love him forever,” he says, laughing himself. “And why don’t you come for dinner…tomorrow?” As he says this, he looks over at Steve, reading in the next chair, and raises his eyebrows, only finishing his sentence when Steve nods.

————————————————————————————————

So Nat and Clint come for dinner the next day. They’ve done this enough that it’s not stressful anymore, and he always has plenty of food in the freezer, so he’s not worried overmuch about what he’s going to feed them.

 

Steve’s been watching a bunch of ancient dessert cooking videos lately, and gets it in his head to make some kind of chocolate-mint-bourbon pie, which Bucky is more than happy to facilitate. 

 

For his own part, he fixes this pasta thing with lab-grown fish and tomato cream sauce, and also collards, because he can hear his mama in his head telling him to feed people something green, for the love of God. It’s easy, but it always makes people happy, and the collards are from the farm, obviously, so they’ll be as fresh as can be.

 

Nat and Clint will bring wine, because that’s the way this works. And maybe some kind of cheese and fruit situation, if one of them is feeling particularly into fixing something up. 

They show up about an hour before dinnertime, and the cooking is mostly at a point where it can get left, so they all go out and sit on the porch and eat some little tomato and bread things and drink some wine. 

When they first come in (without ringing the doorbell, as per usual), Nat shakes Steve’s hand and Bucky can tell she’s gripping it unnecessarily hard, just to see what he’ll do. Which is itself completely unnecessary, but if it makes her feel better. Clint goes in for a bro hug, but seems utterly unfazed when Steve steps out of it, and just extends a hand to shake as well.

After being initially a little cold, Nat seems to warm up to Steve, content he isn’t some malevolent being sent here to bother her friend.

They talk about what Nat and Clint grow on their farm, and how Steve and Bucky met (and then Nat tries to coax Steve into telling embarrassing stories about Bucky as a child), and what Clint does in his spare time. It’s maybe weird, but Bucky feels like he learns more about Steve that evening than he had in all the time they’ve spent together on the farm so far. It’s not that they didn’t talk at all, but more that their conversations were often practical, or related to some piece of media they’d both consumed. Not getting to know you sort of questions.

The two of them seem to get along like a house on fire, even though Nat is prickly and Steve normally a bit reserved. Under other circumstances it might make Bucky feel a bit left out, in a sort of “They were my friends first!” way, but truth be told, he’s been worrying enough about Steve out here all alone that he can’t quite muster up the energy to be upset. He just talks to Clint about his dog, and his sort of not-sister Kate who’s living out on LA-918, and whatever kind of coffee he’s tried recently.

It’s good. They talk, and they drink, and after a fashion they eat, and it all feels normal. Contented. Nat and Clint go home late that night, stumbling tiredly into their transport to head home, because no one wants to walk a mile in the dark after drinking like they did. 

Steve and Bucky clean up together in peaceful, amiable silence, washing dishes and wiping down the table and putting away leftovers. They head to bed pretty much as soon as they’re done, both pretty tuckered out after all the socializing, but Bucky can’t help but feel a little sad to see Steve turn the opposite way down the hallway. 

During the now-shorter midnight wakefulness, he choses to stay in his room, not wanting to pressure Steve into spending even more time together. He tries to read a book, but can’t seem to focus on the words, finds himself reading the same page several times over. Thoughts of the dinner together fill his head, going places he’d promised himself he wouldn’t go, had told himself didn’t matter to him. They still don’t matter overmuch, really, but his brain won’t stop pestering him with the image of Steve, hair shining golden in the porchlight, laughing at a joke and looking happy and safe and at home. 

The second sleep is the deep sleep of the truly exhausted. If there are nightmares, they don’t wake him. As good as it was, the evening had taken a lot out of him, and it felt like no time at all before his alarm was going off the next morning, bright and early.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> heyyyyyy i'm back  
> i'm still not sure that this is back from its unannounced hiatus, but here! have 1,000 words!

 

Things change again for the second time because of a nightmare. Bucky wakes up crying this time, dreaming about things that had happened and things that hadn’t, people he’d known in the war and people he’d known before and after. People he loved. It’s a distinctly awful dream, made worse by the fact that its the first one in a while. 

 

He’s sitting up in bed, shivering as much because it’s cold as because he’s afraid. His hair tousled, first from sleep and then from his fingers. A headache pounds at the base of his skull, radiating fingers of cold pain up into his brain, the cherry on top of how basically awful he feels at that moment. He’s sitting in the near-dark, staring at the sliver of purple-black sky visible between the curtains when he hears a whisper of bare feet on hardwood outside his room.

He looks up to see Steve standing in the doorway, ghost pale against the gaping black of the hallway. He looks concerned, not a trace of sleepy in his eyes, but rumpled. He’s shirtless, and some part of Bucky notices scars he’s never had occasion to see before.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks.

Bucky just shrugs and sighs, too tired to pretend but also not tired enough to tell the truth out loud.

“Do you. Well. Do you want company?” 

_Do you want company?_ is a vastly different question from _Do you want to talk about it?_ , and Bucky appreciates the distinction. The idea of opening his human mouth and using it to say words out loud about his dreams is abhorrent, but so is the idea of lying alone in the dark, caught up in his own head and thoughts and memories.

He nods, not feeling up to talking at all, apparently. Steve comes in, his feet whispering on the wooden floor, and then hovers awkwardly to the side of the bed. It’s clear that neither of them got very far in thinking about how this would work, but Bucky peels back the covers on that side and gestures for Steve to climb in. It’s chilly enough that he’s put a warm quilt on the bed, something his mother emailed him during his early days on the farm. It’s red and white pieces of different patterned fabrics, something riotous and cheery, which was undoubtably her intention. 

Once he’s in the bed, Steve holds himself a little stiffly, leaning back but not really lying down. Maybe if his head didn’t hurt so much, or if he hadn’t just had this nightmare, or if it wasn’t the middle of the night, Bucky would know better than to do what he does next, but there it is.

He looks at Steve, only barely visible in the darkness, and whispers, “You could. We could. If you wanted, you could,” he pauses to take in a quiet shaky breath. “Hold me.”

He’s simultaneously glad for the dark, because it means Steve can’t see his face as he asks, but also wishes it were lighter so he could read Steve better. He must not be disgusted at the question though, because he slides down further in the bed and curls one warm golden arm around Bucky’s middle. There’s another moment of shuffling after that, where they both scoot until Steve is one long line along Bucky’s back, their feet tangled together. Steve smells good and clean, and he is _so warm_ next to Bucky it makes his throat hurt. He squeezes his eyes shut, tries not to leak tears everywhere, and breathes deep.

Bucky didn’t think it possibly, but he finds himself drifting off after not too long, as he feels Steve’s breaths even out beside him. It’s a dreamless sleep this time, thank god.

————————————————————————————————

 

He wakes to the sound of his alarm clock, feeling warm and for once free of pain and well rested, and utterly disinclined to ever rouse himself from the bed. He’s not normally a slow-morning kind of a person, but something about the new experience of waking up next to another warm body is changing his mind on that. He has a new point of reference for his childhood memories of storming into his parents room and finding them reluctant to get up.

 

He inhales deeply, taking in the smell of Steve and sleepiness and the cold crispness of the morning air on his face. And then he steels himself, and tries to slide out of the bed. Next to him, Steve makes a sleepy little noise and tightens his arm around Bucky. He closes his eyes for a second, and then redoubles his attempt to get out of bed. It’s cold out there in the world, but there are chores to be done. Chickens to look after, at a minimum. 

 

On a normal day, he’d get dressed and then go on making coffee and doing the pre-breakfast chores, but today doesn’t feel like a normal day. It’s the first really chilly day of fall, and he just had this totally emotionally vulnerable moment with Steve. He can’t imagine just shrugging that off and pretending nothing ever happened. Somehow it doesn’t seem respectful to the gravity of the night before.

 

Before leaving Steve to sleep a while longer, he pulls a worn sweater on over his t-shirt, and takes one last lingering look at Steve’s sleeping face, looking more at peace than he ever does awake. If he never gets to have this again, he’d at least like to take the time to remember it properly.

 

And _then_ he goes to make the coffee. Takes his time with it. 

 

It’s normally Steve’s chore to make breakfast, but again, today isn’t a normal day. Bucky thinks back to his childhood again, of the mornings when he and his siblings would clamor in the kitchen to make breakfast for their mother on special days, making much more mess and noise than she ever would have. By the time everything was cooked, or overcooked, she had always woken up, but would stay in bed, to indulge their nascent caretaking desires.

 

He’s quieter now, and much less likely to serve someone toast burnt black, but he feels again the need to take care, to look after, that he hasn’t felt in a while.

 

Despite the high emotions inside their little house, it’s still a normal day to the rest of the world, so they’re meant to be having oatmeal for breakfast. Not much you can do to make oatmeal seem like a special treat, especially when you eat it 200 days out of the year, but so be it. 

 

He makes the oatmeal, using the good oats that were set to soak overnight. Cooks some golden raisins in with them, toasts some pecans to go on top. Takes his time, thinks about what he’d like someone to do for him.

 

That’s not a question he’s really had much, these past years. It’s been all struggling to stay afloat, and then just routines, not a lot of spare time for emotions and taking care with things. 

 

He also takes his time because he knows that the moment that follows this one is going to be emotionally heavy. It’s going to be uncharted waters for the two of them, and he has no idea how it’s going to go, simply that it will. He’s not ready to face that yet, needs a few moments more of this calmness, and so he drags out the oatmeal-making, setting everything out on the breakfast table, fixes Steve’s coffee, and tries not to spiral down into worry too much.

 

And then, a parallel to the night before, there’s Steve, standing in the kitchen doorway, looking sleep-rumpled but far less concerned.


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Bucky is entirely not prepared for this conversation. There’s a small part of his brain that just whispers Run, as if bolting out the door would fix anything at all. Because he’s An Adult, he smiles at Steve."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here we go folks! Took a good bit longer than I thought it would, but I've finally managed to make this happen the way I wanted it to. Don't hold your breath for an epilogue, but that doesn't mean there won't ever be one. 
> 
> Thanks to etymologyplayground for helping me figure this out. It definitely wouldn't be here without them.

Bucky is _entirely_ not prepared for this conversation. There’s a small part of his brain that just whispers _Run_ , as if bolting out the door would fix anything at all. Because he’s An Adult, he smiles at Steve.

 

“Good morning. I was just making some oatmeal. Would you like some?” It’s more formal than they usually are with each other, but it’s a damn sight better than just up and leaving, so he’s satisfied. 

 

“Uh, sure.” Steve’s voice is rough from sleep, and it instantly reminds Bucky of how good it’d felt to be curled up together, sleepy and warm and solid.

 

Because he’s also a little bit of a wimp, he doesn’t bring up anything that happened last night while they’re eating their breakfast. He tells himself that it’s because eating should be about eating, and not about Big Emotions, but really it’s because he’s just too nervous. 

 

In the end, though, just like it was Steve who started it last night, it’s Steve who brings it back up today. _Clearly Steve is doing something right here_ , he thinks.

 

“So. Last night was. Good, right?” he says, sounding just as tense and nervous as Bucky feels.

 

“Yeah. It was more than good, really,” Bucky says, trying to be honest while also not showing his entire hand at once.

 

“Yeah?” Steve sounds shy. Reticently hopeful. 

 

“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “If you. Well. If you ever wanted to do that again…”

 

Steve is quick to answer, probably too quick, but Bucky doesn’t care. “Yes. God yes.”

 

Bucky nods jerkily. Smiles a crooked sort of smile. Feels his belly and chest suffused with warmth.

 

The conversation doesn’t end there, because that would be even more awkward, but that’s all the things of substance that either of them say right then. Eventually they can’t put off starting work for the day any longer, so they separate and Bucky heads outside. There’re animals to take care of, and fall vegetables to harvest. Weeding. (There’s always weeding, even when it feels like it ought to be too cold for weeds.)

 

All day, though, when he’s meant to be focusing on milking a cow or picking a pumpkin, what he’s really thinking about is Steve. The way that he takes care of the house, his quiet smile, his laugh. How good it had felt to wake up next to him. The way he wants to do it again. 

 

He’d have said before that he didn’t dwell on it. Well, he’s dwelling on it now. Making up for all those months of not thinking about it. It’s not all sunshine, though. What if Steve doesn’t think of him that way? What if last night was just a friend comforting another friend? What if, despite what Steve had said, he never got do it again? 

 

In the end, though, he needn’t have worried. When he gets back to the house, it’s a cozy counterpoint to the gathering dark and chill, and there’s dinner, and everything is cheerful to the point of giddiness. His worries melt away as they laugh together, and he imagines the light and warmth and _happiness_ of their little house spilling out into the miles of darkness around them. 

 

————————————————————————————————

 

So they go to bed together again. And again. And again. And so on for several weeks, until it becomes completely normal and not something Bucky hardly even really thinks about. It starts off with Steve coming into his room in the middle of the night a few times, and then after one especially hard and long day, he comes into Bucky’s room while they’re both getting ready for bed, and that’s the start of it all. After that, they climb into bed together every night like an old married couple.

 

It’s. Extremely pleasant. Of course there’s some part of Bucky that’s thinking about touching Steve’s dick sometimes, and there has been more than one occasion of one of them waking up hard and feeling extremely awkward, but mostly it’s fine. Not awkward, just warm and safe.

 

Having someone else there does not, of course, cure the nightmares. Or the PTSD. Or any of the rest of it. That’s just not how people work. And there are times when he snaps at Steve, or pushes him away, because all that shit is still going on up in his brain, no matter how much shit goes right in his life. But. It’s getting better. It’s been getting better. And having someone else to lean on helps. Having someone next to him when he wakes up crying helps. He’ll be damned if he’d admit it to anyone else, but not being cooped up out on the farm alone, stewing, _helps_.

 

With everything going along well, with the harvest and the butchering and the sleeping and the housekeeping, it’s no wonder things stay the same for a while. Don’t mess with it if it ain’t broke, and all that. The farm work gets lighter and lighter as it gets chillier, and even occupying himself with selling off the harvest and preserving the food they need for winter doesn’t take up all his time. Which means, ultimately, more time with Steve.

 

They don’t just stay out there all alone. They see Natasha and Clint at least once a week, and go into town every so often when they need something they can’t make themselves. Sometimes just for a change of scenery. The period of nighttime wakefulness gets shorter and shorter until it disappears, and that has _got_ to be weird for Steve. It takes some getting used to.

 

The days get dramatically shorter, which makes it hard on a person, but there’s also all of the good parts that come with fall and winter. Coziness and great steaming plates of hot food and different holidays. Lab-grown down comforters on their bed, and fuzzy socks, and the time to just spend _together_ , talking and laughing and remembering. Steve takes up a knitting project, even though that isn’t really necessary anymore, and churns out a number of lumpy hats. They start watching a new show together. Learn to cook some new things. Take extravagant naps in the middle of the day. Eventually, play in the snow like they’re ten years old again.

 

They’re happy. Despite everything that happened, they’re happy.

 

————————————————————————————————

 

It changes again perhaps because Bucky was too happy. Too comfortable and sleepy and warm inside. 

 

Here’s what happens: Bucky wakes up, Steve a solid warm line curled along his back, one heavy arm slung around his middle. He stretches a little, squirms back against Steve. 

 

Steve makes a sleepy little sound and shifts, his breathing starting to sound like that of an awake person. 

 

Bucky rolls over, turns to face Steve. Thinks about the chickens and the cows, and his overwhelming desire to never leave the bed. Brushes a kiss across Steve’s lips. Levers himself up to go and take care of all the things that need doing.

 

He doesn’t think about it, really. It just seemed the thing to do, in the moment. And Steve doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even really register he noticed, so he goes on getting ready, pulling flannel-lined pants over his legs, and wellington boots over that. Etcetera. Goes outside and does his chores. It’s a bone cold morning, about two weeks before Midwinter, and he’s hurrying, because it looks like rain, or maybe snow, and he hasn’t had any coffee yet. 

 

He only really realizes that Steve _did_ notice, and that it _did_ matter, when he gets back inside. He’s fussing with the kettle and the French press and the coffee grinder when he hears Steve come into the kitchen, his sock feet whispering across the wood floor. He expects the feet sounds to stop somewhere around the vicinity of the kitchen table, or the cupboard with the mugs, maybe, but they don’t. They come right up behind him, in a way that would have _terrified_ Bucky a year ago. He’s still holding his breath, a little.

 

And then he feels two warm arms wrap around his waist. Lips pressed to the back of his neck. Smells Steve’s shampoo, as he leans to rest his chin on Bucky’s good shoulder. He holds perfectly still, barely daring to breathe, not wanting to break the moment.

 

After a moment, Steve lets go, takes a shuffling step back. Bucky turns around and looks at him. Really _looks_ at him, in a way he doesn’t usually let himself. Takes in the look in his eyes and his tentative, hopeful body language. And then. Takes a step forward. Cups Steve’s jaw in one hand. Kisses him, full on the mouth, gently but surely.

 

And then they’re kissing.

 

They break apart after a while, when the kettle starts to sing, but they stay close by. Steve doesn’t go over to sit at the kitchen table. In between toasting bread and drinking coffee, they kiss, contented and still a bit sleepy. It’s hard to eat breakfast when all you want to do is hold hands, but they seem to manage it somehow.

 

————————————————————————————————

 

They talk about it eventually, because they _are_ adults, thank you very much, but it takes a few hours of kissing and cuddling and half-assed attempts at doing chores before they really settle into talking about Wants and Needs and all that. They’re on the same page about basically everything, so all the awkwardness in the conversation is generated by Steve’s shyness and Bucky’s nervousness, not by any real discord. 

 

And so then that’s the new normal. Spending their days together, sleeping side by side at night, kisses whenever. 

 

It’s not perfect, but it’s theirs. Theirs to share and take care of and grow. 


End file.
